Iranian oil tycoon used Labuan to skirt sanctions on Iran, says New York Times report


Dateline 2013-10-06, Malaysian Insider:

An Iranian tycoon has used the tax-free port of Labuan for his oil business to skirt Western sanctions imposed on his country, the New York Times reported.

Babak Zanjani, 39, devised a scheme to disguise the origins of Iranian oil and sold it on the open market by transferring millions of barrels from tanker to tanker, often using Labuan as the drop-off point, as alleged by the European Union.

The New York Times quoted Zanjani in interviews with Iranian reformist weekly Aseman and the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency as saying that he used a vast network of 64 companies in Dubai, Turkey and Malaysia to sell millions of barrels of oil, earning US$17.5 billion (RM55.6 billion) in foreign exchange for Iran’s oil ministry, the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian central bank.

 

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